“English Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions.” By James C. Fernald. 564 pages, cloth. Price $1.50 net. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.
It is not pleasant to read a composition or hear an address in which over and over, and frequently, the same word is used to express a thought when the language furnishes from two to a dozen synonymous terms; for the English language is peculiarly rich in synonyms. The reason is that it has appropriated from every great language of the world. Yet these synonyms often differ, sometimes radically, in meaning. To avoid both extremes—either barrenness in expression, or the careless and incorrect use of words—a study of synonymous words is necessary. In such a study the student can find no better help than the work named above. More than 7,500 synonyms are classified and discriminated. The prepositions to be used with many of these words are indicated by illustrative examples. Another great help to the student is the list of antonyms, or words of opposite meaning. Questions and examples are given in Part II to encourage the study and facilitate the acquirement of the right use of the various words treated. Both author and publishers are entitled to our thanks.
“American Communities and Cooperative Colonies.” By William Alfred Hinds, Ph.D. Second revision, 608 pages. Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago.
Mr. Hinds has given us a valuable contribution in bringing together in one volume the various communistic settlements and cults from the Ephrata Community in Pennsylvania, 176 years old, to Fellowship Farm Association, Westwood, Mass., the latest of colony experiments. The rise or attempted rise of a hundred or more communities is given, and also the failure of most of them. Still the author believes in ultimate communism because of the man’s longing for it. It will never be reached in this world. Man’s longing will be met only in Jesus Christ and His coming sinless kingdom of regenerate souls.
“Liberty, Union, and Democracy. The National Ideals of America.” By Barret Wendell. Price $1.25 net. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
This book contains four lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, 1905, as follows: “The National Character of America,” “Liberty,” “Union,” and “Democracy;” and these were the outgrowth of lectures delivered in France. Mr. Wendell holds, and rightly, we believe, that the true American character is not composite, but peculiarly, distinctly American, indigenous to the soil, born of revolution and desire for liberty. His lecture on liberty is a discussion to quite an extent of the national and states’ rights ideas, the unit of government, and the rights of the individual, but, strange to say, he does not even touch on the principles of religious liberty, which played such a part in American independence. Like others, the author seems to misinterpret the phrase, “All men are created equal,” in the Declaration of Independence to mean equality in point of mentality, power, etc., when, as we conceive it, the fathers meant equal in point of privilege, in the enjoyment of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” to which the ignorant dolt is as clearly entitled as the chief magistrate. Mr. Wendell has given some readable essays, but we wish he had developed some of his principles further.
“A Desk-Book of Errors in English, Including Notes on Colloquialisms and Slang to Be Avoided in Conversation.” 232 pages. By Frank H. Vizetelly, F.S.A., associate editor of the Standard Dictionary. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.
This handy little volume bound in red cloth is one of the Standard Desk-Book Series. It stands for correct English. The preface declares: “The purpose of these pages is not to dictate a precise course to be followed, nor to lay down rules that will prevent any speaker or writer from exercising his privilege as an individual of speaking or writing freely and independently the thoughts that are uppermost in his mind. It is, rather, to point out common errors which he may unconsciously commit, and to help him to avoid them and the vulgarisms of the street which have crept into the language, as well as those absurd blunders that have been recorded as the unconscious acts of persons qualified in other respects to rank as masters of English.” The author has given us a helpful little manual. May it prosper on its way.
“The Union Prayer Meeting Helper, 1908.” Notes by the Rev. W. C. Stiles, Brooklyn, N. Y., and Prof. Robert Scott, Montclair, N. J. Topics prepared by the Rev. Claude R. Shever, St. Louis, Mo. Price 25 cents. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.
This handy little book contains a calendar of 1908, fifty-two excellent topics for prayer-meeting for the year, notes generally good, and many excellent hints on the conducting of prayer-meetings. Sometimes the notes are most excellent, as in topic 6, sometimes they flatly contradict the Scripture, as in topic 30. But the little book is worth its price and more in its suggestions and arrangement.
“The True Method of Healing.” By George Mitter, Pastor Third German M. E. Church, 603 Livernois Ave., Detroit, Mich. English, 50 cents; German, 80 cents. Address the author.
Mr. Mitter first considers the true method of healing the human soul, by leading the soul to Christ by the word and Spirit. In the healing of the body the author holds that “the vital force of the sick body” is the only power that can heal. To assist this vital force the body must be cleansed externally and internally. He also admits the influence of the mind over the body, and endeavors to prove his basic proposition by appeal to magnetism, hypnotism, etc. But he makes a sorry argument when he endeavors to prove that the cases which Jesus healed were by the same method; namely, inducing the vital energies of the sick body to effect the healing. It is so much easier to believe that Jesus healed by the power of His life, infused into the sick or dead.
“The Secret of a Good Memory: A Practical Treatise on Memory and Its Cultivation.” By J. Mortimer Granville, M.D. Eagle Printing and Binding Company, Pittsfield, Mass.
In this volume the author presents the principles developed and originated by Mr. J. W. Clarke, of London, England. The contention of the author is that every person has some one sense more acute than others, some best way of taking in notions or ideas, some by the eye, for instance, others by the ear. This sense or method should be more strongly cultivated and made to subordinate others to its purpose of building up a good memory. The secret of good memory is therefore in ascertaining the way by which our thought makes its most permanent records, to learn the faculty most serviceable, and cultivate it to its highest degree of usefulness.
“China and Methodism.” By Bishop James W. Bashford, 118 pages, 35 cents, net; Published by Jennings and Graham, Cincinnati, Ohio.
This little volume gives an interesting account of the land and the people of China; it tells of their religions, and also describes the progress of Christianity in the empire. In a chapter on “Possibilities” in China the opportunities for Christian work are set forth in a convincing manner. The volume came from the press in 1906 and was designed as an appeal especially to the Methodists of the United States to stir them up to suitably participate in the centennial celebration of the founding of missions in China, which celebration was held in Shanghai the last of April and the first of May, 1907. And while the book was prepared for that special purpose, yet it is full of valuable and interesting facts.
“Practical Christian Sociology.” By Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph.D. Revised, fourth edition. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.
This book is a collection of lectures by the author on Moral Reforms and Social Problems. Mr. Crafts is a prodigious worker, a user of apt similes and trite metaphors; but he is poisoned with the virus of the National Reformers, and therefore believes and works for impossible things thru a union of church and state. He believes in not only rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, but in Cæsar’s compelling men to render to God the things which the National Reform Bureau, of which Mr. Crafts is the head, decides to be God’s. Some of his reforms are truly to be commended, but when he enters the religious field, he is a forerunner of the recrudescence of the Dark Ages. The book is valuable for its facts and figures; it is venomous in its politico-religious teaching.
“The Apostles’ Creed: Its Origin, Its Purpose, and Its Historical Interpretation.” A lecture with critical notes by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Washburn professor of church history in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. 1,206 pages. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
The contention of Dr. McGiffert is that the Apostles’ Creed is a growth founded on what is called the old Roman Symbol, a much abbreviated form; that the latter arose in the second century, in Rome, as a baptismal formula, a protest against certain errors which had then begun to come into the church. From the lecture and the learned notes one can easily see that the creed has no other authority than tradition. The book will be chiefly of interest to those who wish to know the traditional beginnings of extra Biblical customs.
“Of Such Is the Kingdom, and Other Stories from Life.” By Richard L. Metcalf, associate editor of The Commoner. The Woodruff-Collins Press, Lincoln, Neb.
This little book is a home brightener in its sweet stories of children, and brave souls. We may not always agree with its death-bed theology, but we feel constantly that we are in sympathy with the writer, whose touches of nature make all his readers kin.